Maybe you’ve heard that soy is bad for the environment because forests are being cut down to make room for soy plantations. Vegans are often told by meat-eaters that their soy products are therefore bad (even though as a vegan you can live without soy). Fortunately, if you’re in Europe then you don’t contribute to the removal of any forests and in this blog, we’ll explain why.

Nowadays most soy is grown in South America. Because plantation owners can earn a lot of money from growing it, there are more and more soy plantations being created. To make room for this, rainforests are often destroyed, including unique parts of the Amazon. This is not only bad for the environment, but also for the people and wildlife in the area. Every year 1 to 2 million hectares of rainforest in South America are deforested, leading to the extinction of many rare plants and animals. Deforestation is not only caused by the creation of soy plantations. In the last 30 years, animal farming has been the biggest cause of deforestation. More than 70 percent of this deforestation was to make room for factory farming. After animal agriculture, soy cultivation is the second largest cause of forest felling, which is unfortunately also caused by animal agriculture.

The vast majority of South American soy is grown as an ingredient for animal feed. To grow food for all the livestock in the Netherlands alone, an area the size of roughly 1 million football fields full of soy are grown every year. Most of the soy for livestock comes from South America, as the soy is much cheaper there than in Europe. More than 90% of the soya cultivated in South America is grown purely as animal feed. By eating meat, dairy or eggs, you therefore contribute to deforestation in the Amazon region.

The rest of the soy is used for the most part as biofuel (an estimated 6-7 percent). Ultimately, only about 3-4 percent of the soya cultivation in South America is used for so-called ‘soy products’. For a meat burger, 5 times as much soy is needed as for a soy burger, so if you want to use less soy, you should switch to meat and dairy substitutes.

In addition, meat and dairy substitutes that are for sale in Europe are not made from soy that caused deforestation. Almost all soy in South America is genetically modified soy and is only used in Europe as animal feed. The remaining 3-4 percent of soy for human consumption from South America goes mainly to the United States and a few other countries where genetically modified soy is used in products for human consumption. In Europe, it’s permitted to sell products with genetically modified soy (or other GMO crops), but it’s legally required to state on the packaging that the product contains GMO soy. Because producers know that genetic modification is not exactly popular in Europe, there are barely any products with GMO soy on sale. In any case, we’ve never seen a product that said it contained GMO ingredients in the Netherlands (where we live). There are currently no meat substitutes or plant-based milks containing genetically engineered soy in the Netherlands, so buying them doesn’t contribute to deforestation in South America. In addition, many brands of soy products also work with sustainability certificates and are transparent about where their soy comes from (at Alpro, for example, their soy is mainly grown in Canada and the EU). So you can eat soy products in Europe without worrying about the environmental impact.

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Okay, so the argument is basically “Rain-forests are in fact being cut down to cultivate soy, which is in fact causing harm to the planet, but it’s all the big bad carnivores’ fault”. The rest of this article seems to contradict the title, and the only real fresh take seems to be that vegans are purely innocent in the nonetheless-still-happening deforestation that results from soy plantations. Seems like removing the profit incentive from cutting down rain-forests, like some sort of severe “deforestation tax” would be much more efficient at saving the planet than pointing fingers at people who ingest flesh.

Not exactly. First of all, soy products sold in Europe are made from soy that has been grown in the EU or Canada. Therefore, to eat soy here does not contribute to rain forests being cut down whatsoever. If you live elsewhere, then it is possible that your soy comes from a rain forest area. However, why would that be worse than other products that are grown in rain forest areas such as bananas and coconuts? Choosing to avoid soy seems rather random. In addition, if everyone would go vegan, we’d need less agricultural land than we’re currently using to feed everyone so there would be no need for deforestation and we could still provide everyone with soy burgers while still reforesting part of the previously destroyed rain forests.
The main point is that about 90% of rain forest deforestation is for the production of meat, the majority to make space for cattle ranches and the rest for growing animal feed. A ‘deforestation tax’ could be useful, but that would only limit deforestation, while if everyone would go vegan that would just make deforestation completely redundant as we’d suddenly have much more available agricultural land than we could profitably use for the production of food and other products, therefore ending any incentive for deforestation other than possibly for the wood.

Exactly the info I was looking for! I make soy candles and my brother in law brought it to my attention that soy farming is destroying South America so I thought I would do some research. I think I will contact my wax supplier to see if they can tell me where their soy comes from. Thanks for the post!

Why do you think that a meat free world would be beneficial to the rainforest? The South American farmers would quickly find other markets for their soya production, if they could no longer produce for meat agriculture. Why should they voluntarily give up their livelihood?The demand for soya products as a human nutrient is certain to rise instead, and other spinoff soya products will appear. We will get a powerful Soya lobby with dollars in its eyes. Making a product popular/politically correct is not a way of diminishing its production.

First of all, soy plantations aren’t even the biggest incentive to cut down the rainforest in South America. An even bigger part of the newly created land is used for animal agriculture (so basically space to keep animals, mostly cows). If no one eats meat anymore, this land will no longer be used for that and can be used for other purposes or can be returned to nature. You are probably right that some of the soy framers would continue to grow soy for human consumption or other purposes. However, if everyone went vegan, we’d need much less agricultural land to feed everyone. There is no reason for farmers to produce tons and tons more food than our world population could possibly consume, so in a vegan world, there would be a whole lot of agricultural land that we would have to find a new purpose for, whether it’s to create non-food consumer goods or just giving it back to nature because farmers and investors will also realize that there’s little profit in large-scale overproduction. So I don’t think that’s much of a worry and even if these farmers would continue to grow the same amount of soy, then the environment would still be a whole lot better off than if we’d all continue to eat meat.